World Government Lobby Frets Over Fate of Lugar

“He’s got to run against who he is.” This was the verdict on Republican Senator Richard Lugar from one of the activists attending a Citizens for Global Solutions (CGS) national conference in Washington, D.C. last week. The group used to be known as the World Federalist Association but dropped the name because of the taint associated with promoting world government.

The incumbent Lugar, one of their favorites, is fighting for his political life in the Indiana Republican Senate primary against Richard Mourdock, Indiana’s State Treasurer, who has highlighted Lugar’s financial link to Democratic money bags George Soros. “Senator Lugar is one of the few Republicans ever supported by Soros,” Mourdock says.

The World Federalist Association had openly stated that a “world federation,” a euphemism for world government, can be achieved by advancing “step by step toward global governance” through establishing new U.N.-associated entities such as the International Criminal Court and by passing measures like the Law of the Sea Treaty. One of its main priorities is “To provide the U.N. with sustained and independent sources of funding.” That is, global taxes.

“Lugar can’t use that part of who he is,” said a left-wing activist, discussing the race as people waited for Obama Administration officials to brief the participants on “genocide prevention.” He said the world government lobby had met with Lugar’s personnel to offer their help, but were told that any public expression of support for the liberal Republican senator would backfire because of mounting Republican suspicions that Lugar is a RINO—Republican In Name Only.

In this context, the release of the latest CGS Congressional Report Card cannot come as good news for the senator. The group gives Lugar a B minus, the highest for any Republican in the Senate except for liberal Susan Collins of Maine.

By comparison, the other Republican senator from Indiana, conservative Dan Coats, got an F.

The report card measures votes on global issues such as ratification of U.N. treaties, and funding for international institutions such as the U.N. and the International Monetary Fund.

As Lugar’s true colors as a globalist begin to be covered by the national media, another embarrassment has emerged. A local elections board has ruled that Lugar can’t vote for himself in the primary, scheduled for May 8, because he doesn’t live in the state.

Once known as then-Senator Barack Obama’s closest Republican friend in the Senate, he is now running as somebody opposed to the Obama agenda on issues such as the intervention in Libya.

The big question is whether his extreme makeover as an anti-Obama conservative Republican will work. The major media have been content to let Lugar remake his image, but alternative media such as Red State and Tea Party groups have been working hard to get the facts out to the voting public. The result is that although Lugar had been leading Mourdock by 20 points, the latest poll has him up by only six. This is making big news on a national and local basis, with one paper proclaiming, “Polls indicate gap in Indiana’s Senate primary closing.”

Lugar, a prominent backer of the U.N. Law of the Sea Treaty, even has financial ties to the world government lobby, having accepted campaign contributions from the Citizens for Global Solutions political action committee and giving an interview to the organization’s newsletter. One edition of its newsletter hailed Lugar as one of several “internationalist Senators” the group was working with. Another heralded Senators Obama and Lugar as “globally-minded leaders” supported by CGS. Lugar has been “a long-time advocate for internationalism,” it said.

Although it admires Lugar and other liberal Republicans, the CGS works hard to defeat conservative Republicans. In 2006 it attacked Pennsylvania Republican Senator Rick Santorum, who was running for re-election. Drew J. Asson, who ran the CGS political action committee trying to defeat Santorum, was quoted as saying that President Bush was a “fascist” and that Israel was guilty of “aggression” and “murder” in its campaign against terrorists. Asson’s PAC gave $5,000 to Santorum’s successful opponent, Bob Casey, who promised a “new direction” in foreign and domestic policy.

But shortly after an editorial in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review challenged Casey about the controversial donation from the group, Casey’s campaign returned the money.

Obviously aware of the sensitivity caused by a financial link to a world government group, the Lugar campaign website makes no mention of it and instead insists the senator is a “national security leader.” It emphasizes Lugar’s work with former Democratic Senator Sam Nunn on the Nunn-Lugar bill to eliminate nuclear weapons in Russia. However, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) revealed that some of the funds were used to destroy obsolete weapons that Moscow was going to replace with high-tech arms and provide salaries for Russian scientists.

The campaign website does not mention how Lugar had served as one of Obama’s mentors and had accompanied him on a 2005 trip to Russia, when Kremlin authorities briefly confiscated and reviewed Obama’s passport.

The Lugar-Obama relationship, now in the closet because of Lugar’s need for an extreme makeover, was once out in the open. “Old-school realist Richard Lugar, the five-term Republican senator from Indiana, has embraced new-school realist and rising star Barack Obama, the junior Democratic senator from Illinois,” noted the Washington Monthly back in September 2006 under the title, “Hoosier Daddy.”

It went on, “The relationship is admiring. ‘I very much feel like the novice and pupil,’ Obama has said of Lugar. And it’s warm. Lugar praises Obama’s ‘strong voice and creativity’ and calls him ‘my good friend.’ In short, the two agree on much and seem to genuinely like each other. Rather unusual in hyper-partisan Washington, these days.”

The “Republicans for Obama” website even features Lugar, noting in an article, “Republican Richard Lugar endorses Obama,” that the Senator had praised Obama’s foreign policy decision to engage America’s enemies.

Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism and can be contacted at cliff.kincaid@aim.org.